so ive decided to hard focus on pet battling/collecting until shadowlands comes out, so far i have 418 pets and i think around 40 or so ish leveld to 25, i can complete all pet battles/celestial tournament but i kind of free style instead of having designated setups prebuilt/using guides. could someone take a look at my collection and tell me if im missing any obvious very powerful pets? ive been struggling to figure out what i should be farming for/leveling up next. i dont feel like im in the stage of just collect any and every pet yet

The matching will have missed some. For example, you do have a Spring Rabbit, but because of the way the Xu-Fu list is laid out, it didn't match. These could be fixed, but probably best you just go down the list and see and think about each for yourself.

Under that "Most Used Pets" page, I have a comment about the preferred breeds for each.

Of both those lists, you might not use a whole bunch of them, but the list is thorough enough that you know you probably should have all of them sooner or later.

At 900/1000/1100 pets, we don't seem to worry much about the lists much, and most fights are easy by comparison to the early days, however, I recommend, for example, looking at the pets and the spells/process used in various dungeons, because what you learn real quick is how much you don't know about pet abilities. It's a real strong learning tool ... however, we just get set on a rotation and boom we stick with it ...

As for leveling the pets, if you get the procedure right and time if properly, you can easily level 50 pets, any number of levels you wish with Squirt for example. You just keep switching pets ... and elsewhere here on this site I once did about somewhere close to 500 levels on many pets and got like 35 or 40 of them to 22/23 and finished the fights easily enough in Val'sharah with the Teroclaw Hatchling mostly in the lead. Also make sure you take advantage of Pet Battle Week, when the amount of experience you get in each fight is almost 3 times the regular amount ... in the Squirt fight a level 1 goes from 1 to 18 (I have the hat) but if you do it with other buffs, you might get further up. But at 18+, they can be a 3rd pet in Val'sharah ... easy enough ... take a shot or two and park it and finish with something else.

After I got past all the pets being 25, it was easier, since I had 5 characters with WQ's and all five would do the battles for the Charms, and one character kept track of everything .... (very important, btw!) ... and nowadays, with Charms on dailies in the boat, it's easier than ever, and my main has over 700 pet charms ... and that means I just buy the 25 stone ... over and out ... I only do (mostly) the new battles in Naz and Mecha ... and might go finish the dungeons ... though I'm not a fan of the 8 week BS thing for worthless pets that you will never use again!